19 - 20 AOÛT 2010

- 20 AOÛT :

- CHINE : Xi'an - The Daming Palace National Heritage Park, covering a planned area of 3.2 square kilometers will officially be opened to the public in October 2010. Starting from Emperor Gaozong of Tang, all of the emperors of Tang lived and handled government affairs in the Daming Palace. The palace had served as China’s political and cultural center for 220 years, where many major historical events of the Tang Dynasty took place. The palace was built in the "Eight Years of Zhenguan" or 634 AD during the reign of Emperor Taizong and was originally called the Yong'an Palace. It was a summer palace that Li Shimin, Emperor of Taizong, built for his father Li Yuan, and its name was changed into the Daming Palace later.

- CHINE : Chengbu Shiwangutian - A picture of a large-scale catastrophe from ancient history and a cultural relic, "Shiwangutian", refers to an ancient farming and settlement site, in Chengbu County in Hunan were shown on an archeology forum on Aug. 18. The Chengbu Shiwangutian was destroyed by a plague of locusts during the Qing Dynasty. After the locusts' plague, the site was turned into an uninhabited area and a large amount of cultural relics were preserved. The site has become a cultural relic in China. Shiwangutian is in a trapezoid shape that is higher in the north and lower in the south. It has been divided into upper part, middle part and lower part. There is a big circle with the diameter of 300 meters in the middle part of the farmland. It has been considered to be the site of an ancient city. There is also a three meters wide moat surrounding the ancient city. The archeological researchers have also discovered a "Hu Guang ancient post road."

- U.S.A. : Luke Air Force Base - Archaeologists hired by Luke Air Force Base will excavate seven sites where hundreds of Native American artifacts have been found to clear the way for construction of the military's largest solar array. On an initial survey of the land, archaeologists found well-preserved pottery shards, stone hammers, grinding tools, arrowheads, a shell and burned rocks, indicating areas that were used for making tools and cooking, according to a draft report. But the site could hold ruins of homes or hearths underground. Nearby digging in previous years failed to turn up features below the surface, but the likelihood of their presence is high, the report says.

- U.S.A. : Port Angelès - Lower Elwha Klallam tribal members are once again searching for artifacts at the site of the ancient Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen. 200 artifacts, many of them etched stones and arrow heads, have been found over the last few weeks. Some bone fragments also have been found. Last year, 2,134 artifacts were found in the soil. Many of those artifacts, along with the 64,793 artifacts uncovered by construction of the graving yard, will be held at a facility at the Tse-whit-zen site. The graving yard, which was to build replacement components for the Hood Canal bridge, was abandoned because of the uncovering of the relics and human burials, some dating back more than 2,000 years.

- SRI LANKA : Godavaya - An ancient ship believed to have sunk more than 2,000 years was located close to the historical Godavaya Port. It is believed that the newly found ship is older than 2,000 years. Historical items including a stone bench with an ancient inscription have also been discovered among the wreckage. Godavaya was an important sea port that believed to have served as a transit point on the ancient silk route to exchange goods between the East and West.

- RUSSIE : Teriberka - The Shtokman road construction surprisingly discovers an ancient settlement of Paleolithic humans. The finding is dated to II Century BC; so far there have been excavated about 20 thousand archaeological evidences of the ancient settlement. Peopled hunted and fished here adjusting themselves for local severe conditions. The mechanisms for local assimilation are to be discovered after scrupulous study.

- U.S.A. : Mobile - Archaeologists have excavated sites in Plateau, in north Mobile County, looking for remnants of the daily life of the Africans who arrived in Mobile in 1860 as captives on the slave ship Clotilda.

- ALBANIE : Thousands of valuable icons, stored in museums to stop them from being stolen, are slowly decaying as the government hasn’t stumped up the money to restore them. Nearly two decades ago, the threat of thefts from medieval churches, often situated in remote villages, convinced the Albanian authorities to gather up the country’s vast collection of icons and other religious artifacts and store them in museums. But while the move saved these treasures from falling into the hands of thieves at a time when law and order had broken down, their new homes have not proved ideal.

- U.S.A. : York River - Two of the nation's foremost underwater archaeologists began work in the river off Yorktown Beach Wednesday morning, surveying the previously undetected wreck of a ship that may have been scuttled by the British during the Revolution. The unidentified ship is believed to be part of a fleet of nearly 60 British vessels that were anchored off Yorktown during the October 1781 battle that ended the Revolution.

- ALBANIE : Appolonia - Two significant Roman arefacts have been unearthed in the ancient city of Apollonia, archaeologists have announced. The bust of an athlete and the decorated foot of a bronze statue were discovered by an Albanian-French archaeological expedition. The ruins of Apollonia are located in the village of Pojani, just outside the city of Fier, on the right bank of the Vjose River. Founded in 588 B.C. by a colonist from Corcyra and Corinth, the city flourished in the classical period and was renowned for his philosophy school. The first archeological expeditions in Apollonia were undertaken during WWI and the Austrian occupation, followed by a series of French expeditions beween 1924–1938. A series of Albanian expeditions has investigated the site after WWII, however archeologist believe that nearly 90 per cent of the city remains to be unearthed.

- U.S.A. : Little Salt Spring - Divers from the Florida Aquarium and the University of Miami brought up artifacts discovered 90 feet below the surface of Little Salt Spring. In the pitch-black depths of an isolated North Port spring sits a silt-covered ledge that is revealing secrets about a prehistoric nomadic people, secrets held in murky silence for 100 centuries. This stuff could be as old as 13,000 years old, when wandering tribes traversed Florida. Their travels included stopovers at what is now known as Little Salt Spring. In the last ice age, between about 10,000 and 13,000 years ago, the water level was 90 feet lower then than it is today. Little Salt Spring is where we have at least a fighting chance at finding some traces of human activity say 9,000 or 10,000 years ago. The sinkhole's water chemistry and temperature have helped to create a one-of-a-kind, prehistoric submerged site where late Paleo-Indian and Archaic artifacts are unusually well preserved.

- U.S.A. : Monocacy - National Park Service crew members use a measuring tape to guide surface penetrating radar equipment in search of additional slave dwellings on the Best Farm in the Monocacy National Battlefield. Six such structures have been found on the land. Individual slave dwellings have been found, but never an intact village like the one that existed in sight of the manor house on what was a 748-acre plantation called L'Hermitage.

- MEXIQUE : Mexico City - Archeologists have uncovered more than 500-year-old remains of about 50 Aztec children, some of them stuffed into ceramic jars for burial, during excavations for a new subway line in Mexico City. They also found the foundations of Aztec homes, hundreds of small figurines, and pots and plates dating from 1100 to 1500 AD. In total there are 60 graves, 10 adults and around 50 children of different ages, some two or three years old. The graves reflect burial practices of the Aztecs, who often interred their dead relatives underneath their homes. Deceased children were often placed in earthen vessels before burial in the belief that the jars would resemble the mother's womb and keep them warm. Among the objects found was a 20-inch (50-cm) stone figure of a woman discovered under the graves of two children. The subway line links several suburbs that were built on the site of centuries-old Aztec towns. In one suburb, Culhuacan, archeologists found fragments of pots and stone carvings of faces dating back as far as 2000 BC. Mexico has around 40,000 registered archeological sites.

- ROYAUME-UNI : Caistor St.Edmund - Archaeologists are set to unearth further secrets of a Roman town on the outskirts of Norwich - and are hoping to discover evidence linking the settlemt to East Anglia's Iceni queen Boudica. The Roman town of Venta Icenorum lies beneath the fields at the site but historians believe it might have been built on top of a previous Iceni settlement - perhaps even the home of the warrior queen Boudica. Archaeologists will also be searching for clues to discover the exact date when the Roman streets were originally laid out and if the town continued to be occupied beyond the Roman period. Parts of the site were originally excavated between 1929-1935 following the publication of dramatic aerial photographs showing the streets and public buildings. Since then, the site was left undisturbed. It might be that the Romans built on top of a tribal centre as a means of repressing them, or it might have been built here because one of the tribal kings was friendly with the Romans. But if it is a major Iron Age settlement then it is certain that Boudica would have been aware of it, might have visited it or might even have lived here.